The Solid Gold Cadillac (review)

Sun Aug 08 2004, 09:22pm | comments off

Nearly half a century on, Richard Quine’s satirical romantic comedy still has all the bite it must have had in 1956, when it was adapted from the Broadway play by George S. Kaufman and Howard Teichman. Judy Holliday, in what was her standard not-so-ditzy, not-so-dumb blonde role, crashes the annual stockholders’ meeting of International Project, a New York megacorp, disrupting the proceedings with not-so-innocent queries about outrageous executive salaries and other corporate idiocies. Soon, Holliday’s Laura Partridge has set the company topsy-turvy, fallen for former CEO Edward McKeever (Paul Douglas), and uncovered unfair practices and rampant corruption that she’s determined to fix for all the small stockholders like herself. Silly and charming but smarting with indignation for the little guy — or gal, in this case — the film remains surprisingly modern, a perfect fit for the era of Enron. And fifty years on, the film still looks great on DVD, digitally mastered in a widescreen presentation.